We don’t talk much about teaching in academia, and that’s a problem. Our silence makes it difficult for junior faculty and others teaching their first courses to raise issues and ask questions. Teaching is rarely a topic at faculty senate meetings, where professors are more likely to debate parking rates than teaching methods. A colleague I talked to recently referred to this as the “invisibility” of teaching at our institutions. We reflected on the irony of this, since both of us believe that the main point of education is teaching and learning.

Individually, most of us take teaching very seriously, but as a group, we tend to ignore it. The prioritizing of research over teaching at many of our institutions just reinforces this invisibility.

About the blogger

Alex Friedrich reports on higher education issues for MPR News. Among the stories he has covered: the fall of the Berlin Wall, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, 2003 Moscow suicide bombing and 2004 presidential elections in the Republic of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s in European political economy from the London School of Economics.